Tuesday, December 28, 2010

I've been thinking a lot about bunting recently. Considering all of the information we have about offensive statistics, it's surprising to me that we don't have more data on bunting readily available - Fangraphs has data for bunt hits and sacrifice bunts, but it's much more difficult to find information for bunts that aren't hit into play. Certainly, one of the most important aspects of being a good bunter is being able to consistently get the ball in play, so I believe that it's just as important to look at foul and missed bunts as it is to look at fair bunts. Combining the Fangraphs bunting splits leaderboard with PITCHf/x data can give us a more detailed look at who the league's better and worse bunters are.

There are three main things that I was able to quantify with the data I was working with - the frequency with which a batter attempts to lay down a bunt, the frequency of bunts put into play, and the overall quality of the bunt. Before I get more in depth on the metrics I've been working with, I think it would be best to show some generic bunting benchmarks for the 2010 season.

Attempt%

Fair%

Foul%

Missed%

League Average

.019

.505

.416

.080

Hit%

Out%

Sac%

Double Play%

League Average

.188

.286

.517

.009

For the first table: attempt% is the number of bunt attempts (fair bunts, foul bunts, missed bunts) divided by the total number of swings; fair% is the number of fair bunts divided by bunt attempts; foul% is the number of foul bunts divided by bunt attempts; missed% is the number of missed bunts divided by bunt attempts. For the second table: hit% is the number of bunt hits divided by fair bunts; out% is the number of bunt outs (in which a sacrifice is not involved) divided by fair bunts; sac% is the number of sacrifice bunts divided by fair bunts; double play% is the number of bunt double plays (there are very few of these) divided by fair bunts. As you can see by the attempt percentage, it's not that common that a hitter decides to try to lay down a bunt - on average, only three or four pitches in a game result in a bunt attempt. For the 2010 season, which is the data set that I'll be working with for this post, I have a total of 5,921 bunt attempts.

Who attempts to bunt the most?

The first metric I'd like to dig deeper into is attempt percentage. The distribution below shows the attempt percentages for 573 hitters who took at least 75 swings last year.

Of the qualified hitters, there were 138 without a single bunt attempt, and a few more with an attempt percentage between 0% and 1%. Approximately 90% of the qualified players had rates under 10%, and the vast majority of the players over the number were pitchers, with Tim Lincecum (.252), Aaron Cook (.247), Livan Hernandez (.234), Zach Duke (.223), and Dave Bush (.218) leading the charge. Raising the minimum number of swings to 200 (and thus eliminating pitchers) gives us these leaders:

Rank

Name

Team

Attempt%

1

Carlos Gomez

Brewers

.107

2

Julio Borbon

Rangers

.105

3

Peter Bourjos

Angels

.102

4

Juan Pierre

White Sox

.098

5

Erick Aybar

Angels

.096

6

Nyjer Morgan

Nationals

.095

7

Emilio Bonifacio

Marlins

.093

8

Luis Castillo

Mets

.083

9

Gregor Blanco

Braves/Royals

.081

10

Everth Cabrera

Padres

.078

On a counting level, Juan Pierre was the clear champion of bunt attempts with 111; he was the only player with more than 100. Next closest were Nyjer Morgan and Erick Aybar with 95 and 94, respectively.

One more thing on attempt percentages. Common baseball sense would tell us that the guys who are less offensively adept would be the players resorting to bunting most often. Based on these data, that would appear to be the case. Keeping the 200 swing minimum, here is attempt percentage plotted against linear weight runs per 100 pitches (the numbers aren't exact, so don't consider 0 to be the exact 2010 league average).

For the most part, the frequent bunters are to the "below-average" side of the chart. If you were wondering, the outlier with a bunt percentage of just over 6% and and an 0.69 runs per 100 is the Tigers' Will Rhymes.

Who gets it in fair territory?

As I showed in the benchmarks, the league average rate for fair bunts was just over 50%. For the purpose of looking at season leaders and trailers, I've set a minimum of 20 bunt attempts, which leaves 70 bunters from last year. The tables below show the fair bunt rates for the 10 leaders and trailers.

Rank

Name

Team

Attempts

Fair%

1

Scott Podsednik

Royals/Dodgers

33

.818

2

Ramon Santiago

Tigers

27

.778

3

Will Rhymes

Tigers

20

.750

4

Daric Barton

Athletics

20

.750

5

Clayton Kershaw

Dodgers

27

.741

6

Ryan Dempster

Cubs

26

.731

7

Barry Zito

Giants

22

.727

8

Alexi Casilla

Twins

20

.700

9

Tony Gwynn

Padres

30

.700

10

Elvis Andrus

Rangers

56

.679

1x

Roy Halladay

Phillies

22

.136

2x

B.J. Upton

Rays

23

.174

3x

Rajai Davis

Athletics

36

.222

4x

Alcides Escobar

Brewers

37

.270

5x

Chris Coghlan

Marlins

29

.276

6x

Mike Leake

Reds

22

.318

7x

Jon Garland

Padres

22

.364

8x

Anibal Sanchez

Marlins

22

.364

9x

Nick Punto

Twins

27

.370

10x

Orlando Hudson

Twins

27

.370

Since this metric only judges whether the bunt was in play or not, its best use is probably to determine which players would be good in sacrifice situations. There are plenty of pitchers sprinkled throughout the list (including three in the top 10 and four in the bottom 10), and the pitcher's role is almost exclusively to sacrifice.

Who does the most damage?

But what about what happens once the ball is in play? There are a number of possible ways to quantify this; Fangraphs has bunt average, which is a good way to show how productive non-sacrifice bunts were. In this post, I will use hits over all fair bunts as opposed to non-sacrifices (detailed in the glossary). Below are the 10 leaders for hit%, out%, and sac%, with 10 fair bunts as the minimum.

Rank

Name

Team

Fair Bunts

Hit%

1

Adam Jones

Orioles

12

.583

2

Gregor Blanco

Braves/Royals

21

.571

3

Cameron Maybin

Marlins

11

.545

4

Jose Reyes

Mets

17

.529

5

Ichiro Suzuki

Mariners

14

.500

6

Angel Pagan

Mets

25

.480

7

Ben Zobrist

Rays

15

.467

8

Kevin Fransden

Angels

11

.455

9

Sean Rodriguez

Rays

16

.438

10

Cesar Izturis

Orioles

17

.412

Rank

Name

Team

Fair Bunts

Out%

1

Emilio Bonifacio

Marlins

14

.786

2

Koyie Hill

Cubs

10

.600

3

Rafael Furcal

Dodgers

11

.545

4

Reggie Willits

Angels

13

.538

5

Trevor Crowe

Indians

13

.538

6

Roger Bernadina

Nationals

17

.529

7

Juan Pierre

White Sox

55

.527

8

Michael Saunders

Mariners

14

.500

9

Drew Stubbs

Reds

14

.500

10

Orlando Hudson

Twins

10

.500

Rank

Name

Team

Fair Bunts

Sac%

1

Darnell McDonald

Red Sox

13

.923

2

Brett Myers

Astros

12

.917

3

Clayton Kershaw

Dodgers

20

.900

4

Barry Zito

Giants

16

.875

5

Roy Oswalt

Astros/Phillies

13

.846

6

Ryan Dempster

Cubs

19

.842

7

Bud Norris

Astros

12

.833

8

Chris Carpenter

Cardinals

12

.833

9

Chris Volstad

Marlins

11

.818

t-10

Mat Latos

Padres

11

.818

t-10

Wandy Rodriguez

Astros

11

.818

t-10

Livan Hernandez

Nationals

11

.818

The sacrifice column is interesting because it is composed entirely of pitchers except for the leader, Red Sox outfielder Darnell McDonald.The last thing I'd like to look at in this post is a way to tie in all of the facets of bunt attempts into one metric. Using run values is typically the best way to do this. For bunts in play, I'm using the following weights (with "0" representing a neutral outcome):

Bunt Double Play - -0.78

Bunt Out - -0.28

Sac Bunt - -0.03

Bunt Single - +0.50

Bunt Double - +0.83 (there was only one bunt double last year, courtesy of Cliff Pennington)

In the overall value, I'll also include failed bunt attempts. The run values for these pitches are dependent on the count and should be similar to the ones shown here.

There will be two sets of leaders and trailers for this metric, which for now I'll refer to as bunting runs - there's bunting runs as a counting stat, and there's bunting runs per 100 attempts. I don't really like using 100 because it doesn't really have much meaning when it comes to bunting, but it's a nice, round number and is commonly used for rate stats. According to my numbers, the league average bunt runs/100 in 2010 was -3.46 (-2.95 for bunts not in play and -0.51 for bunts in play), which would mean that overall, attempting to bunt leads to a below-average outcome.
The top table shows bunting runs, and the bottom table shows bunting runs / 100 (minimum 20 attempts for both). Both lists include pretty much the same players, but I've included both metrics anyway.

Rank

Name

Team

Bunt Runs

1

Gregor Blanco

Braves/Royals

3.27

2

Angel Pagan

Mets

2.76

3

Ben Zobrist

Rays

2.26

4

Adam Jones

Orioles

2.00

5

Elvis Andrus

Rangers

1.99

6

Jose Reyes

Mets

1.93

7

Cesar Izturis

Orioles

1.59

8

Julio Borbon

Rangers

1.56

9

Ichiro Suzuki

Mariners

1.55

10

Cliff Pennington

Athletics

1.19

1x

Juan Pierre

White Sox

-6.27

2x

Nyjer Morgan

Nationals

-3.92

3x

Chone Figgins

Mariners

-3.79

4x

Joe Blanton

Phillies

-3.48

5x

Denard Span

Twins

-3.06

6x

Emilio Bonifacio

Marlins

-3.04

7x

Livan Hernandez

Nationals

-2.89

8x

Mike Pelfrey

Mets

-2.81

9x

Derek Lowe

Braves

-2.56

10x

Orlando Hudson

Twins

-2.47

Rank

Name

Team

Bunt Runs / 100

1

Gregor Blanco

Braves/Royals

9.35

2

Adam Jones

Orioles

8.35

3

Ben Zobrist

Rays

7.52

4

Angel Pagan

Mets

5.75

5

Ichiro Suzuki

Mariners

5.73

6

Jose Reyes

Mets

4.71

7

Cesar Izturis

Orioles

4.55

8

Cameron Maybin

Marlins

3.66

9

Elvis Andrus

Rangers

3.56

10

Alexi Casilla

Twins

3.39

1x

Joe Blanton

Phillies

-15.82

2x

Mike Pelfrey

Mets

-12.79

3x

Zach Duke

Pirates

-11.54

4x

Derek Lowe

Braves

-11.13

5x

Livan Hernandez

Nationals

-9.97

6x

Trevor Crowe

Indians

-9.87

7x

Hiroki Kuroda

Dodgers

-9.40

8x

Orlando Hudson

Twins

-9.13

9x

Roy Halladay

Phillies

-8.99

10x

Emilio Bonifacio

Marlins

-8.94

I think it's fair to say that Gregor Blanco was the majors' best bunter in 2010. As notable is Juan Pierre's number of bunting runs, which shows that lots of mediocre bunting might not be a good idea.

Hopefully, this post provided some answers about bunting; in addition, it certainly raises some more questions. Next week, I will expand to data from 2008 and 2009 in order to look at larger sample sizes and year-to-year correlations.